by Plato
INSPIRED BY PLATO AND REPUBLIC
“The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” Alfred North Whitehead’s wry assessment of Plato’s importance to the philosophical tradition of Europe is something of an exaggeration. Yet it is not wholly inaccurate. Beginning with Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.), who spent twenty years as Plato’s student at the Academy, virtually all philosophers and philosophical schools active in lands exposed to Hellenic culture owe significant debts of inspiration to Plato. As is abundantly evident from Aristotle’s extant works, the efforts of later philosophers to respond to key Platonic texts such as Republic have necessarily entailed the interpretation and transformation and (at times) misrepresentation of Plato’s thought. Thus, as we consider the legacy of Plato both in and beyond the field of philosophy, we will do well to keep in mind that, at times, the relationship between what Plato may have intended to convey and what he inspired can be tenuous.
Aristotle expected his readers and students to be familiar with the Platonic dialogues, and it is fair to say that some of his best-known works—Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, Poetics, and Metaphysics-are fundamentally “inspired by” Republic, insofar as they seek to refine and (in places) contest what Plato has Socrates suggest about the relationship between moral excellence and happiness in the individual, the proper organization of a functional political community, the need to censor poetry (especially tragedy), and the theory of the “ideas.” The Academy ceased to be the chief institution for the study and transmission of Plato’s thought in the third century B.C.E., but, by this time, Plato’s works were widely read in the Hellenic world, and they became popular in the elite philhellenic circles of Roman society during the second and first centuries B.C.E. The Roman politician, orator, and philosopher Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.E.) was profoundly influenced by Plato, and he modeled several of his philosophical treatises on Platonic dialogues, including his De republica (On the Commonwealth), which was intended as a Romanized version of Republic. A few centuries later Plotinus (205-270 C.E.), after settling in Rome to teach philosophy, developed a comprehensive system of philosophical thought and religious belief that was founded on key concepts derived from Plato’s works—most notably, the idea of the good in books 6-7 of Republic-which Plotinus identified with “the One.” This system came to be known as “Platonism,” or “NeoPlatonism”; its principal tenets are expounded in six collections of Plotinus’ writings, which Plotinus’ student Porphyry (c.234-c.305 C.E.) published at the beginning of the fourth century, and which came to be called Enneads. It is through Enneads and the writings of Porphyry that Saint Augustine (354-430 C.E.) was exposed to Platonism, ensuring that Plato’s thought had a lasting (albeit indirect) influence upon the philosophical direction of Christianity for the next thousand years. In 529 C.E., on the order of the emperor Justinian, the Academy (along with all other philosophical schools in Athens) was forced to close. Before this happened, the Neo-Platonist philosopher Proclus (c.410-485) brought the study of Plato back to the Academy. Proclus served as the Academy’s head for several years and wrote commentaries on Republic, Timaeus, and Parmenides, which are still extant today.
The writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas (c.1225-1274), particularly the Summa Theologica (1266-1273), established Aristotle as the most important ancient philosopher in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance. “Platonism,” however, enjoyed a second flowering in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries thanks to the efforts of the Florentine scholar Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), whose effort to forge a fresh integration of Platonic thought and Christianity—an effort that found its most complete expression in Platonic Theology (1482)—was deeply influenced by Plotinus and Proclus. By the end of the sixteenth century, literate people in Europe had access to printed texts of Plato’s dialogues, both in Greek and in translations into various modem languages. It is accordingly no surprise to find that, during the modern period, Plato’s words and thoughts have been quoted and referred to—and reaffirmed and disputed and praised and condemned—by numerous important philosophers in Europe and Great Britain: among them, Michel de Montaigne (1533-1592), François Marie Arouet (“Voltaire,” 1694-1778), Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), Georg Hegel ( 1770-1831 ), John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900), Martin Heidegger (1889-1976), and Karl Popper (1902-1994). Meriting special mention here is the famous group of “Cambridge Platonists,” led by Benjamin Whichcote (1609-1683), who sought at the beginning of the scientific age—in a particularly difficult period of British history—to reconcile Christian beliefs with the Platonic conception of a rationally ordered universe.
The practical influence of Republic is more difficult to gauge than its impact on the theorizing of later thinkers. Nonetheless, over the centuries, individuals have discovered in Plato’s works the inspiration for undertaking political or social or educational reform. The following two examples are illustrative. First, as is discussed in the introduction, Plato and his friend Dion (c.408-354 B.C.E.) evidently planned to educate the young Dionysius II of Syracuse in the hopes that, upon succeeding his father as the city’s ruler, he would put into practice the political ideals they cherished, which may have been something like the proposals for the ideal state and the government of philosopher-rulers that Plato has Socrates advance in Republic. More recently—and more modestly—Benjamin Jowett (1818-1893), the translator of this edition of Republic, placed Plato’s dialogues at the center of the humanities curriculum as part of his program of educational reform at Oxford University. It is interesting to note that Jowett seems to have met with more success than Dion. Whereas Dion was eventually assassinated for his zealous efforts to bring political and social reform to Syracuse and other Greek cities on Sicily, Jowett’s Plato-inspired campaign helped modernize Oxford and transform it into one of the world’s leading educational institutions.
Lastly, we may note that Republic has inspired not only much ex pository analysis, but also countless creative presentations, literary and otherwise. Many depictions of both utopian societies and their dystopian counterparts, ranging from Thomas More’s Utopia (1516) to Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726) to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932) to George Orwell’s 1984 (1949), have their roots in the ideal city brought to life by Socrates, Glaucon, and Adeimantus. Contemporary films such as Gattaca (1997) and The Matrix (1999) may not owe direct inspiration to Republic, but they participate in a long tradition of artistic works that ultimately trace their concerns back to the political, social, and metaphysical issues raised in Republic. Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974) represents a different type of inventively constructed narrative that looks critically at the formulations of Platonic philosophy and the influence that Plato has had on subsequent ages.
The field of philosophy has greatly changed since Plato began to teach near the shrine of Academus on the outskirts of Athens. It has evolved into a complex and sophisticated discipline that deals with issues and problems that Plato and his contemporaries would have been unable to conceive of, much less address. Nonetheless, as Alfred North Whitehead has suggested, the philosophical studies pursued today in Europe, Britain, and the United States are (still) deeply indebted to Plato. Most basically, Plato seems to deserve much credit for establishing that it is appropriate and meaningful for “philosophers”—in the name of the “love of wisdom” (philosophia)—to pursue a variety of interests, from ethics to political theory to metaphysics to epistemology to theology to logic, and to discover for themselves the modes of expression that best permit them to convey their ideas.
COMMENTS & QUESTIONS
In this section, we aim to provide the reader with an array of perspectives on the text, as well as questions which challenge those perspectives. The commentary has been culled from sources as diverse as reviews contemporaneous with the work, letters written by the author, literary criticism of later generations, and app
reciations written throughout the work’s history. Following the commentary, a series of questions seeks to filter Plato’s Republic through a variety of voices and bring about a richer understanding of this enduring work.
Comments
ARISTOTLE (384-322 B.C.E.)
The members of a state must either have (1) all things or (2) nothing in common, or (3) some things in common and some not. That they should have nothing in common is clearly impossible, for the constitution is a community, and must at any rate have a common place—one city will be in one place, and the citizens are those who share in that one city. But should a well-ordered state have all things, as far as may be, in common, or some only and not others? For the citizens might conceivably have wives and children and property in common, as Socrates proposes in the Republic of Plato. Which is better, our present condition, or the proposed new order of society?
There are many difficulties in the community of women. And the principle on which Socrates rests the necessity of such an institution evidently is not established by his arguments....
We ought to reckon, not only the evils from which the citizens will be saved, but also the advantages which they will lose. The life which they are to lead appears quite impracticable. The error of Socrates must be attributed to the false notion of unity from which he starts. Unity there should be, both of the family and of the state, but in some respects only. For there is a point at which a state may attain such a degree of unity as to be no longer a state, or at which, without actually ceasing to exist, it will become an inferior state.
—from book II, 1260b27-61a12, and 1263b29-34 in Politics,
translated by Benjamin Jowett, Oxford: Clarendon Press (1905)
PLUTARCH (C.50-120 C.E.)
It is unlikely that either the Romans or the Greeks will find fault with the Academy, since in this book, which presents the Lives of Dion and Brutus, each nation receives very similar treatment. Dion was a disciple of Plato who knew the philosopher personally, while Brutus was nurtured on his doctrines, so that both men were trained in the same wrestling school, one might say, to take part in the struggle for supreme power. There is a remarkable similarity in many of their actions, and so we should not be surprised that they often illustrate a particular conviction of their teacher of virtue, namely that power and good fortune must be accompanied by wisdom and justice if a man’s political actions are to be seen as noble as well as great.
—from “Dion,” chapter 1, in The Age of Alexander :
Nine Greek Lives by Plutarch,
translated by Ian Scott-Kilvert, Harmondsworth, UK:
Penguin Books, 1973
DESIDERIUS ERASMUS (C.1466-1536)
Surely you don’t believe that there is any difference between those who sit in Plato’s cave gazing in wonder at the images and likenesses of various things—as long as they desire nothing more and are no less pleased—and that wiseman who left the cave and sees things as they really are?
—from The Praise of Folly (1509),
translated by Clarence H. Miller, New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1979
GEORG WILHELM FRIEDRICH HEGEL (1770-1831)
Plato’s Republic, which passes proverbially as an empty ideal, is in essence nothing but an interpretation of the nature of Greek ethical life. Plato was conscious that there was breaking into that life in his own time a deeper principle which could appear in it directly only as a longing still unsatisfied, and so only as something corruptive. To combat it, he needs must have sought aid from that very longing itself. But this aid had to come from on High and all that Plato could do was to seek it in the first place in a particular external form of that same Greek ethical life. By that means he thought to master this corruptive invader, and thereby he did fatal injury to the deeper impulse which underlay it, namely free infinite personality. Still, his genius is proved by the fact that the principle on which the distinctive character of his Idea of the state turns is precisely the pivot on which the impending world revolution turned at that time.
—from the preface to Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1821),
translated by T. M. Knox,
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1942
FRIEDRICH VON SCHLEGEL (1772-1829)
Plato’s philosophy is a dignified preface to future religion.
—from “Selected Ideas,” in Dialogue on Poetry and
Literary Aphorisms (1797-1800),
translated by Ernst Behler and Roman Struc,
University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1968
RALPH WALDO EMERSON (1803-1882)
Out of Plato come all things that are still written and debated among men of thought. Great havoc makes he among our original ities. We have reached the mountain from which all these boulders were detached. The Bible of the learned for twenty-two hundred years, every brisk young man who says in succession fine things to each reluctant generation,—Boethius, Rabelais, Erasmus, Bruno, Locke, Rousseau, Alfieri, Coleridge,—is some reader of Plato, translating into the vernacular, wittily, his best things. Even the men of grander proportion suffer some deduction from the misfortune (shall I say?) of coming after this exhausting generalizer. St. Augustine, Copernicus, Newton, Behmen, Swedenborg, Goethe, are likewise his debtors and must say after him. For it is fair to credit the broadest generalizer with all the particulars deducible from his thesis. Plato is philosophy, and philosophy, Plato.
—from “Plato; or The Philosopher,”
in Representative Men (1850),
J. M. Dent & Sons, 1908
SØREN KIERKEGAARD (1813-1855)
What Socrates really meant by wanting to have “the poets” expelled from the state was that by writing in the medium of the imagination instead of precipitating men into ethical realization in actuality, the poets spoiled them and weaned them or kept them from it. One could be tempted by and large to make the same charge against “pastors” today. Yes, compared to Socrates Plato himself is a misunderstanding. Only Socrates managed to hold his uncompromising position of continually expressing the existential, constantly remaining in the present—thus he had no doctrine, no system and the like, but had one in action. Plato took his time—with the help of this enormous illusion there came to be a doctrine. By degrees the existential disappeared from view and the doctrine grew dogmatically broader and broader.
—from “Socrates,” vol. 4, entry 4275,
in Søren Kierkegaard’s Journals and Papers,
edited and translated by Howard V Hong and
Edna H. Hong, Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1975
KARL MARX (1818-1883)
Plato’s Republic, in so far as division of labour is treated in it, as the formative principle of the State, is merely the Athenian ideal isation of the Egyptian system of castes, Egypt having served as the model of an industrial country to many of his contemporaries also, amongst others to Isocrates, and it continued to have this importance to the Greeks of the Roman Empire.
—from part 4, chapter 14, section 5, in Capital:
A Critique of Political Economy (1867-1894),
translated by Samuel Moore and Edward Aveling and
edited by Frederick Engels,
New York: Modern Library, 1906
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE (1844-1900)
It was modesty that in Greece coined the word “philosopher” and left the extraordinary insolence of calling oneself wise to the actors of the spirit—the modesty of such monsters of pride and conceit as Pythagoras, as Plato.
—from book 5, number 351, in The Gay Science (1882),
edited by Bernard Williams and
translated by Josefine Nauckhoff, Cambridge and
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001
RICHARD GARNETT (1835-1906)
In estimating the Republic’s place in the history of thought we must take into account the circumstances under which it was composed. The exact date is uncertain, but whether it existed in the form of a book by
393 B.C. or not, its ideals certainly then existed in Plato’s mind and were known to his fellow-citizens, for the community of goods and the community of women are ridiculed in the Ecclesiazusae of Aristophanes, acted in that year. As a young man Plato had passed through terrible experiences, the complete shipwreck of the vessel of State by the disastrous termination of the Peloponnesian War, the atrocities of the oligarchical party who thereupon gained dominion in Athens, and the unjust execution of his own adored master by an ignorant and misguided democracy. Such events were well calculated to engender in Plato’s mind a distrust of all existing political systems, and to set him upon seriously projecting something to replace them. Ever since, the creation of ideal communities has been the frequent amusement of superior minds, and although every such endeavour has but strengthened the conviction that, as a matter of fact, the development of society must proceed upon the lines marked out for it from the beginning, in these, nevertheless, the aspiration after something is no unimportant factor. The winged genius which in ancient works of art accompanies the chariot of hero or demi-god adds nothing to the power or the speed, but stimulates the ardour of the charioteer.
Too bright and good
For human nature’s daily food
Plato is broadly distinguished from his successors, More, Campanella, Bacon, Brockden Brown, etc., and his later self in his Critias, in this respect, that whereas these represent their ideal communities as already existing and only needing to be described, his Republic exists merely in thought, and not even there until it has been provided with a sound basis by a preliminary discussion of the abstract principles of justice. “Nothing actually existing in the world,” says [translator Benjamin] Jowett, “at all resembles Plato’s ideal State, nor does he himself imagine that such a state is possible.”